Review: Headz by JJ Colagrande
Check JJ out November 11 at Bookstore in the Grove as he reads, “Headz.”
Thursday, Nov 12th at Sweat Records 5505 NE 2nd Ave. Miami, FL 33137 Tel: 305.342.0953.
Sunday Nov. 15th, at 3:00 PM at the Miami Book Fair International, in Room 7174.
by Melanie Feliciano
Biscayne Writer JJ Colagrande has published his first novel – not a coffee table book, not a handbook for Dummies, not a pamphlet with some of his poetic musings. Homeboy has published a NOVEL, Headz: The Novel.
This is a particularly poignant moment because this is the first cat that has captured our generation – the one that falls between X and Y. Making such a statement made me immediately open a new tab in my browser to look up the bestselling books on the New York Times, because I thought I was making an uneducated and uninformed claim, but then I realized I may actually be telling the truth here. My generation is NOT publishing books for the New York Times. That’s 20th century paradigm. JJ Colagrande is a 21st century novelist. The entire process of editing, publishing and promoting is DIY – Do It Yourself. This is how 21st century musicians work, this is how 21st century entrepreneurs work, this is how 21st century newz works…
And this is why Conde Nast just folded. Why Reader’s Digest folded. San Francisco Chronicle. Rocky Mountain News. And we all fall down!
This excerpt from the book “It is not true that everything is getting worse” written by Michele Dotti and Jacopo Fo, published by EMI 2008, sums it up:
“…we are moving incredibly fast into the reality of the web – the only truly democratic structure – formed of millions of people, who not only communicate among themselves but also distribute information and culture independently.”
The mechanics and marketing of this book say one thing about our generation (JJ went for an indie publisher by choice), but then the content of the book…ay ya yay…I felt like I was reading my own memoir…which, as I continue writing, I realize, is the memoir of so many Americans – traveling in search of something. For immigrants, it’s usually the search for a better economic life; but for us kidz born and raised in the land of plenty?
F. Scott Fitzgerald told his version for his specific economic T-I-M-E in New York; Jack Kerouac told his version of this story for his specific Age of Aquarius. But how is this story told in the Age of Consumerism? And the Age of the Internet?
Does the new age of connectivity have any ramifications for the novel? Has human experience been altered? Have the conventions of storytelling begun to change—and if not, should they? – Slate, Novel 2.0 (click on this link, it’s really gr8 reading, I promise!)
JJ Colagrande’s novel – a story of traveling archetypes all L-O-S-T in their own particular ways, and hoping to find meaning in Oracledang, the biggest and baddest musical festival of the summer – is written like no other I’ve read. The layout, for example, is not a blob of text that flows from page-to-page, rather, each scene is like a snippet from a movie script. After years of hyperlinking from page to page, my attention span manages these snippets quite nicely. I’m not bombarded by superfluous detail, but I am still getting a full story with all the seven layers required of a novel via main character Thelonious Horowitz’s sporadic musings on music festival culture, speeches about spiritual consciousness and informational backstory monologues about all the characters.
Thelonious is a familiar guide. I recognized this type of “HEAD” immediately – the white B-O-Y who latches on to every other “more earthy” culture than his own privileged Manhattan existence. I dated this guy in college. He smoked blunts and played Spades with hip-hop and Rasta black boys; he studied Ethopian culture and took Swahili classes. But he wasn’t a poser. He was passionate about his work to the point that he continued post-graduate studies and traveled to Ethiopia.
Thelonious doesn’t travel quite so far, but he’s been around – to Miami and San Francisco, to be specific – and he made “high touch” connections with the R-E-A-L peeps of each city. These are the other “pilgrims” of the novel, and they, too, reminded me of folks I met along my own journey, which started in Long Island (Colagrande hails from Strong Island – coincidence? I think not!) to San Francisco to Miami. They’ve got their own Myspace pages!
What’s most interesting about the actual festival scene, which takes place in Chicago, is that all the action happens in the parking lot, before the concert begins.
“We’re a bunch of kidz wandering around a parking lot,” muses Curtis, a head who makes his living selling weed. This is the moment he wakes up and becomes an adult at the Oracledang festival.I can’t stop saying that W-O-R-D, by the way – ORACLEDANG! JJ says it’s a play on the silly names our generation has for festivals – Lollapalooza…Langerado…
But it’s true – our generation is completely L-O-S-T because our headz have been hijacked by everything outside of us, with a little (or a lot of) help from corporations of the 1980s who fed us daily diets of cartoons and “Family Ties” and lots and lots of commercials. At least, this is my theory. Sky’s head is so spongy there is no room for her own thoughts. She’s intent on saving the world (you can see many of these kidz working for AmeriCorps – I was one of them!), and yet, she can’t even save herself. Melody Rain’s head is so hard, it trickles down to her heart. Thelonious’s head is split down the middle between love and hate; Keith’s head is hypnotized by yoga; Teflon’s head is tryin to break free…
The only ones who seem to get it are Curtis and Geri, perhaps because they hail from Miami, the kingdom of L-O-S-T headz. But this is just my theory, I don’t know if this was JJ’s intent. Only the smart and rare are able to break free from Miami’s distractions. Curtis and Geri happen to be two of them. My bigger theory is that Miami is a microcosm of the distractions of American culture as a whole, and my generation can’t focus long enough to find ourselves. But I may be full of shit. I’m full of theories and my own L-I-F-E has been all about absorbing everything and sticking to nothing, so you can take this theory with a grain of sea salt.
However, it does say something that I read JJ’s book in 3 days…while I was in Orlando. Hm. Hm. Hm?
My own path first converged with JJ’s while I was managing editor of The Biscayne Times, a DIY community newspaper in Miami, which has, incidentally, outlived the more-established Sun Post through this economic paradigm shift. We met at “D Place,” a.k.a., “Design Place” during Boomtown Fever. JJ had to remind me, since my ADD M-I-N-D had forgotten, that it was at the pool, we first butt writing headz, and because I am a Latina with a big booty (you can read about that more at TheFemmebots.com), I thought he was hollerin when he was just tryin to tell me he was a real-deal writer.
JJ freelanced a few articles, and we kept running in the same circles since we were both writers tryin’ to figure out how to manage our literary aspirations with the economic realities of Miami. Eventually, I started offering writing workshops to the freelance writers at the newspaper. And that’s why I call JJ an official “Biscayne Writer.” Anyone who participates in any of the Biscayne Writers writing workshops becomes a Biscayne Writer.
JJ was awesome when he was a guest speaker at the first Biscayne Wrtiters fiction writing workshop in the summer of 2005. In his signature rapid-fire passionate syntax, he talked about owning real estate and renting it out so he could just focus on his writing. He talked about the writing and re-writing process. His novel, “Headz,” was still in its tadpole stages, but it was apparent that this was a project that wouldn’t be forgotten on a shelf, destined to collect dust while he pursued a career in marketing…or some other profession lots of writers sell out to…including yours truly.
JJ left Miami and finished writing his novel in Arizona, so we lost touch – cuz this was pre-Facebook years. Fast forward to 2009, a year after I finally joined in the Facebook fun of stalking other friends’ friends. I saw JJ’s name, sent him a request, and voila! His latest newz was that he’s teaching six classes at Miami-Dade College and published his novel.
“I’m selling one book a day!!” he told me.
Holy holy! I was so THRILLED to have reconnected with a fellow writer who continued to pursue his dream. Don’t get me wrong – I have other literary friends who have published this or that. And they have given me copies of their books, and I often don’t get through them, because the content just isn’t my taste. But this book goes right up the nose and straight to my generation’s Headz.
Does this mean you won’t appreciate the book if you are a Baby Boomer? Actually, I think the book would be even more pleasurable for older people to read to understand how their kidz updated their messages of free L-O-V-E (ecstasy), drugs (helium balloons) and rock n roll (electronic music).
Click the video below to watch and listen to JJ reading “Headz: The Novel.”
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